


Show Your Hand

by MintSauce



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, because that episode was stupid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-06
Updated: 2015-04-06
Packaged: 2018-03-21 13:27:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3693962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintSauce/pseuds/MintSauce
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ian's starting to realise a few things. And then he realises a few more.  (Following the crap at the end of 5x12)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Show Your Hand

**Author's Note:**

> I am so furious about that episode I can't even tell you. Bullshit now has found its true meaning.

It feels like he’s sprinted a thousand miles and not moved even an inch.

            He’s level, maybe for the first time in a long time and he’s still drowsy but… there’s something about it that feels good. He doesn’t need fixing, he’s not broken, but he can see the other side of it now too.

            He’s not manic, he’s not depressed. For now he just _is_.

            It’s a great feeling.

            So why is he suddenly feeling so shitty? Maybe because he’s staring at all these little bottles labelled _B_ and remembering the look on Mickey’s face when Ian broke up with him. He’d thought this would be easier without Mickey. One less thing to worry about, one less person to disappoint.

            He was wrong.

            He was wrong because he knows it’d be easier learning how to tackle this with Mickey than unlearning the feel of Mickey beside him in bed is proving to be. It’d be easier than forgetting what Mickey’s lips taste like, what his skin feels like. It’d be easier than working out how to stop himself staring at the door and expecting his favourite piece of Southside trash to burst on in.

            _IAN GALLAGHER!_

He hadn’t realised that had been the beginning of something until he’d ended it.

            It’s not like he’s going to go crawling back and begging for forgiveness. He’d got too much pride for that and he shouldn’t have to apologise. He shouldn’t have to be the one who’s trying to fix this.

            Mickey hasn’t even tried.

            Ian hasn’t seen him since he rounded the corner running from Sammi. Ian hasn’t spoken to him. He hasn’t seen Mickey’s face since and so the image of him that’s branded onto the inside of Ian’s eyelids is him saying _this is you breaking up with me._

            It wasn’t supposed to hurt, but it does. And it only hurts more when Ian thinks about how much he’s fought to hear Mickey admit that there was something between them to break up.

            _I love you_ , Mickey’d said.

            He’d said it again in a voicemail that Ian only listened to in the days after they broke up. Would it have made a difference if he’d heard it earlier?

            He doesn’t know the answer to that.

            He doesn’t want to think about it.

            There’s a knock on the doorframe and Ian looks up to see Kev standing there. How long has he been sitting there? Just staring at some little pill bottles in the kitchen? Probably too long.

            “Hey,” Kev says. He’s holding something in his hand. “This is for you.”

            He takes the envelope from him, fingers shaking like this is some monumental moment. It shouldn’t be.

            “What is it?”

            Kev’s face looks pained and they haven’t been around each other much, but it still feels like the big guy is seeing right through him in that moment. Like it’s all laid bare for him, like he can see right through to Ian’s soul and what he’s seeing makes him sad.

            It’d make Ian sad too he thinks.

            Kev just shakes his head and bows back out the door.

            He leaves Ian there to stare down at the blank envelope in his hands. He knows who it’s from without having to open it. It almost makes him not want to open it, but he has to, doesn’t he?

            It’s just a picture, creased from being handled and ripped a little at the corners. It’s him, stupid hat on his head and middle finger up to the camera like he’s some sort of badass. He can’t even really remember taking it. He certainly doesn’t know why Mickey has it.

            That sums up a lot about Mickey though. There’s so much he just doesn’t know and now probably won’t ever.

            He slaps it down onto the counter, not knowing what good could come from staring at his own face. Maybe that was the point, maybe Mickey just didn’t want to look at his face anymore. He can’t blame him.

            When he pulls his hand back, he sees the writing on the other side. He sees Mickey’s sloppy handwriting, the words cramped and small. He squints, but it’s not that hard to decipher. He’s been speaking Milkovich for too long now for it to be difficult.

            

_My mom used to say love was knowing how to break someone. She was right I think, but maybe love is also breaking yourself when you try to break them._

_I wouldn’t break you, Ian._

_Come fix what you broke, huh._

Ian always imagined moments like these as moving before you’ve given your feet permission to. This isn’t that.

            This is him standing up slowly, hand shaking as he shuts the door behind him. This is him walking down the street, no coat, already freezing. Then this is him running because he realises in fragments that there may not be any real time limit on this moment, but he’s done wasting seconds.

            He’s done spending days staring at the other side of the bed trying to unlearn the feel of Mickey lying there. It should probably tell him something that he’s never been able to forget.

            It’s been a month.

            He can still remember what Mickey tastes like.

            What his skin feels like.

            What his laugh sounds like, when it’s real and when it’s ripped unbidden out of his chest.

            He can still remember the feeling in his chest that came when Mickey pressed his mouth to Ian’s head and said, _I’m sorry I’m late._

            Ian’s already late, but he’s not going to be any later.

            Iggy doesn’t say anything when he lets him in. He just waves him towards the bedroom and there Mickey is. He’s sitting on the edge of his bed, head down and looking so much like he did when Ian left that time, the first time that it’s like a punch to the chest.

            It feels like the wind has been knocked right out of him.

            “I’m not going to beg you to love me like some bitch,” Mickey says, back still to him.

            Ian would wonder how he knows he’s there, but sometimes he realises that Mickey’s always been the one with all the answers. Everyone thinks Ian does, but he has no idea what he’s doing with any of this. Less so than Mickey, because he never used to be the one without cards on the table.

            It’s reversed now. Now he’s not the one showing his hand, but he’s still waiting on Mickey’s move.

            “You don’t have to,” Ian says.

            “Don’t I?”

            It seems like Mickey speaks then without giving himself permission. Ian just wants to see his face. He wants Mickey to look at him, but he knows he won’t. Ian doesn’t deserve that yet.

            “Mickey,” he says and he can see the other boy flinch at the sound of his name. “Mickey. I love you.”

            What else is he supposed to say here? What does Mickey want him to say?

            What does he want from this? What does Ian want from this?

            Mickey scoffs. “You broke me, Ian. You fixed me just to break me, how is that fair?”

            It isn’t.

            “It isn’t.”

            “Fuck you, I know it isn’t.”

            The room narrows down to just two sets of ragged breathing, Ian frozen in the doorway and Mickey hunched over on the bed. It’s like they’re suspended there in this moment in painful time. Ian still doesn’t know what the next move is.

            If it had been any other time, another lifetime maybe. He would have bitten the confessions and the arguments right off of Mickey’s lips. He would have forced the pieces to fit. But Ian’s done forcing anything.

            “I didn’t love you at first,” he says. “I didn’t know you. I still don’t really. You were just this angry ball of sex. It was like a challenge, I wanted to make you like me. I wanted to make you know me, because no one else really stopped to take the time to. But you wouldn’t hold still, I couldn’t make sense of you.”

            He doesn’t know why he’s saying any of this. Maybe because he needs to. Maybe because there isn’t anything else to say but these old confessions.

            Maybe because he’s only realising now that it wasn’t an all-encompassing moment of realising he loved Mickey. No, he fell in love in stages.

            “Then Kash shot you and I didn’t think I’d miss you. I thought I’d miss the sex, but… I don’t know. I did. And learning to read between the lines, I realised you did to. Didn’t you? You missed me.”

            “Yeah,” Mickey says.

            “I wasn’t in love with you then. I liked you. You were still just fascinating. Then we worked together and you had to talk to me. We talked more than we fucked and I stopped even thinking about anyone else and it was just… I loved you. I loved you then. When you tore me apart with words you didn’t even mean. It’s like you said, you knew how to break me and you did.

            “But then you put me back together. You got so jealous and that was how I wanted you. I wanted to prove something to you. I wanted to prove you wanted me as much as I wanted you. I wanted to make you love me. And I did, didn’t I?”

            “Not then,” Mickey says. It sounds like he’s having the words dragged up out of him from somewhere deep. He’s choking them out. “I loved you first. I knew you first. Was why it made me so angry when Mandy send us after you. You were just this kid that wouldn’t stop fucking smiling. I went from wanting to bash your face in to shield you from everything over and over again. I didn’t get you, but I wanted to.”

            His head lifts and it’s like he’s staring at something far away. Ian wants to edge closer to take a look, to see what he’s really feeling. He can’t make his feet move though. He doesn’t want to ruin this moment.

            Maybe he doesn’t have to get closer though, because for once, it doesn’t seem like Mickey is even trying to hide anything.

            “I never fucked anyone else. From that first time, you were it. Even in juvie, I lied. I used to think you were something interesting and then I knew you and you wouldn’t shut the fuck up. I didn’t want you to. You were amazing. You were this kid so much better than anything else I’d ever known and I kept waiting for you to wise up and move on. To realise I’m not good enough for you, that I was only dragging you back. Then you left and I realised I was fucking up. It wasn’t about making you see I wasn’t good enough. It was about trying to be better so I was.”

            He shrugs.

            “I don’t know when I fell in love with you. Doesn’t feel like I ever haven’t been. Just didn’t know how to show it. So I’m not going to beg you to love me. Or to come back. But don’t say I don’t love you, or know you. You’re no different from that freckle-faced fuck I saw save a fucking cat when we were kids.”

            “You saw that.”

            “I fell in love with that. With that Ian Gallagher. And you’re still that Ian Gallagher, just a little bitchier.”

            Ian doesn’t know this Mickey. This Mickey that’s sounding so determined and sure. He doesn’t know this Mickey, it isn’t the one he fell in love with, but then… maybe it is. Maybe he’s the one that’s been a liar here. He’s always thought that the point was that he loved Mickey more.

            He’s been wrong all this time, probably.

            And there isn’t all that much doubt about it, he’s starting to realise.

            “It’s not that simple, though, is it?” he says.

            “Yeah, it really is. I can deal with you being a little bitch if you can deal with me being one too.”

            Ian moves then, like two magnets dragging each other back to the middle point. He can’t resist. He never could. He doesn’t know why he even bothers trying.

            He crashes down to his knees right there at Mickey’s feet. Mickey won’t look at him, so he makes him. He cups the back of Mickey’s neck and digs his blunt nails into the skin there, makes sure he has his attention.

            “I love you,” he says, thumb pressing down over Mickey’s mouth before he can reply. “I can’t promise I won’t break you again, but, I want to learn how to fix you, me, us.”

He pressed their foreheads together and tightens his grip. He won’t lose this. He can’t. He could learn how to exist without this, but he’s realising now that the point is, he doesn’t want to.

“I want to fall in love with you all over again.”

And there it is, the truth. They lost their way somewhere along the way. But Ian’s willing to learn again. He’s willing to fall again.

Broken, fixed. Whatever. It doesn’t matter at the end of it.

Mickey looks at him, really looks at him and it feels like it did with Kev. It feels like he’s staring right into Ian’s soul. Except, unlike Kev, Mickey just looks like he wants to smile.

“I’m going to go buy a shirt,” is the first thing Mickey says. “Then you can start by taking me for that steak.”

The laugh tumbles out of Ian, real enough to erase enough of this heartbreak.

“Okay,” he says, still not leaning back. “Okay.”


End file.
